Questions of legacy can rile up the creative juices in unexpected ways, especially when filmmakers who win a bit of success are allowed to dive headlong into their obsessions. In cases like these, equipped with higher budgets and greater creative freedom, a filmmaker sets out to make A Statement. At best, it’s an opportunity to show off one’s talents with unbridled freedom of expression; at worst, it can lapse into gratuitous excess. This episode of the Film Comment podcast takes up passion projects, particularly those in which filmmakers are given the “keys to the kingdom” after a commercial success. It can be an anxiety-inducing move—as the tagline for Zardoz, John Boorman’s 1974 sci fi statement and Deliverance follow-up, aptly prophesied, “I have seen the future, and IT…DOESN’T…WORK.” As always, Digital Editor Violet Lucca moderates, and is joined by FC mainstays Ashley Clark, film critic and programmer; Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Nick Pinkerton, member of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Films discussed: Zardoz, Harlem Nights, Intolerance, Interiors, Southland Tales, Donnie Darko, The Hateful Eight, Streets of Fire, Hair, One From the Heart, Children of Men, Millennium Mambo, Fences, Something Borrowed

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